A Trip to the Chinese Restaurant

I won't name the restaurant. Really, who knows how the stack of brochures arrived in their dining room? But it was a Chinese restaurant near my home, and I was a walk-in customer. As I paced outside waiting for my order, I glanced in the front window and on the counter, right next to the glass, I saw brochures. Free reading materials! Nom nom nom!

Wave your money away, you mean. (See, pithy cleverness and biting satire. All yours for free at HJHOP.) I guarantee you the chick in the fields is getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. Maybe I'm projecting a little. I live in Atlanta, where the mosquitoes are big enough to carry concealed weapons.

Yoga, Tai Chi, Mediation, Breathwork, Energy Training, Brain Education. Breathwork is a new thing for me. My first thought was that it was some sort of pornographic act, but apparently I had made a connection between the euphemistic "sex work" and "breath play" (autoerotic asphyxiation). But even being strangled by a prostitute would be more productive than what "breathwork" is. Breath work is....breathing at a different rate than you would normally. Now, if you are, say, a blue baby, breathing more quickly might help you, but as far as I can tell, if there are altered states of consciousness associated with this "technique," it is a form of self-hypnosis.

Now, as a teacher, I am in favor of "brain education." Or so I thought until I started researching it. The video you will see below hurts bad, really bad, so I skipped ahead to minute 3:15, the 5 points of brain education, which are mentioned in passing in the brochure:

The five steps are:

1) Brain Sensitization ("Awakens the brain body senses, stimulates blood circulation, and enhances awareness of our brain and its functions")

2) Brain Versatilizing ([It's a lot like "Word Enverbimaking."] "Focuses on our flexibility to free us from our fixed habits or patterns and opens the brain to new information")

3) Brain Refreshing ("Releases negative emotional memories and habits and releases the associated energy toward new perspectives and attitudes")

4) Brain Integrating ("Absorbs the individual personality into the collective hive-mind of the Borg." Haha. Just kidding. Integrates different functional areas in the brain to release latent capabilities and improves communication between the brain's right and left hemispheres.")

5) Brain Mastering ("Helps achieve greater mastery over the brain and develops the power of choice and volition.")

Here's the video:

Every single adult involved in the making of that video should be banned from...influencing children and ought to be sterilized immediately. With hedge clippers. (I liked the women who basically said, "I really thought my daughter was going to be an idiot. But here she is, sitting on my lap, getting grades I never imagined she could possibly get." Meanwhile, the girl was twitching.)

Anyway, according to my pamphlet, Dahn Yoga "is considered Step 1 of a holistic and comprehensive training system knows as Brain Education System Training (BEST)." So, it is a step about heightening one's awareness of the brain. Or possibly not. The benefits, as listed in this pamphlet are:

Weight management

Stress relief

Deep relaxation

Peace of mind

Personal well-being

Increased physical fitness

Feeling younger

Disease recovery

Change habit [sic]

Clearly, you have jumped ahead to step two at the end there, and brain education does not help with your ability to generate parallel grammatical structure. And now that I think about it, if stage one of brain education makes these kids feel younger, what are they going to feel like? Fetuses? ("I tell you, mommy, fifth grade is a bitch, but ever since I started my course in brain education, I've felt as spry as a third grader.")

So much is wrong with this system, it would really take someone who did not have to be up in the morning to go to a psychic fair (mp3 recorder in hand) to cover it completely. I will look quickly, however, at the "self-help checkup." They meant "checklist," but presumably they have not unlocked their latent spelling potential. These are the symptoms that your brainstem might be off, or asleep, or you don't have enough energy vibrating or whatever:

I get frequent headaches.

I feel stiffness in my shoulders and necks.

I have difficulty breathing at times.

I always feel bloated or have discomfort in my intestines.

I catch colds easily.

I have seasonal allergies.

I cannot sleep deeply and do not feel rested upon awakening.

I frequently feel depressed and/or anxious.

I can't concentrate well on what I am doing.

If you answered 'yes' to 3 or more, Dahn Yoga [still undefined, btw] is for you!

A couple of things pop out at me:

1) The cluster of the symptoms at the end suggest that they would prey on the depressed. (Sleeping problems, especially problems with going to sleep and getting up in the morning, anxiety and difficulty concentrating are often associated with depression, a real medical condition that needs real treatment.)

2) Most of these are non-specific ailments that clear up on their own. ("I had a headache. I did some yoga. My headache is gone. I'm so glad I am aware of my brain because now my headache is gone!")

3) If you are having difficulty breathing, you don't need yoga. You need a doctor.

4) You can't possibly know if you catch colds easily because you won't know how many colds you failed to catch...because you failed to catch them.

5) If you do have colds that linger for looooong periods of time, you might have a problem with your immune system, in which case no amount of "developing the power of choice and volition" can possibly help.

And that's all I have for now. So, I SPURN you yoga yobbos! SPUUUURN YOU!

Oh, and the crab Rangoon was delicious, by the way.

HJ